DUFC 2 SMFC 1

United picked up an important (even at this stage) three points on Saturday to move us up to 6th place, and it also brought a first Premiership goal for Scotland striker Lawrence Shankland.

And what a finish it was.

Before we get to that though, it's worth highlighting how important this result was. We've been on a bad little run of late and we needed a result to start building up a bit of momentum. I said last week that these are the kind of games that we need to win and that will define our season, so to win it is crucial.

It was a strange kind of game and I expect that St Mirren will be disappointed to have lost. I thought we were fairly poor in the first half and St Mirren fashioned the best chances - Benji pulled off a couple of terrific stops.

But we went into the interval ahead thanks to that wonderful Shankland strike. The corner came in, Shanks pulled off his marker (oo-er) and the knockdown landed beautifully for him to hook his effort while on the half-turn into the corner of the net. A gorgeous finish.

United then started the second half in tremendous fashion, creating chances, putting St Mirren on the backfoot. We doubled our lead early in the half, Sporle (who I thought was terrific) finally finishing after a couple of others brought saves from the keeper.

The momentum was all with us and it only got better as Tait was sent off for a wild and reckless challenge on Chalmers by the corner flag. You felt we could go on and score 4 or 5 at this point.

Then we got all Unitedy and decided to make things difficult for ourselves. A hopeful ball over the top should have been dealt with by Reynolds, but instead he failed to clear, presented it to their striker who duly scored and brought St Mirren back into the game.

And then we panicked, stop playing the way we had been and you would have thought that St Mirren had the extra man.

Ultimately though we held on and got the valuable three points. There were glimmers of positive things in the way we played, particularly the fact we were fashioning chances again, but still plenty of areas to improve on. I still feel our midfield aren't doing enough in possession and aren't capable of dominating a game, while each of our centre halves have a gift in them - we need to make the opposition work for their goals.

But as Mellon said about Shankland, "HE'S BACK" and that only brings positivity. To have a striker who guarantees goals will make the difference between a relegation battle and potentially fighting it out for top six, which I think is as high as our ambitions can lie with this current squad.

Mon the Terrors